Exterior wall insulation
Has anyone had any experience with trying to insulate the exterior of a brownstone which is detached on one side (ie, it’s the last rowhouse of the set). Our 4-storey house has exposed brick, and I suspect this is a major heat-loss area. Can one put sheet insulation and some kind of extterior finish over…
Has anyone had any experience with trying to insulate the exterior of a brownstone which is detached on one side (ie, it’s the last rowhouse of the set). Our 4-storey house has exposed brick, and I suspect this is a major heat-loss area. Can one put sheet insulation and some kind of extterior finish over it? Any other alternatives? Does re-pointing make a big difference? Our gas heating bill was 1300 for Dec-Jan! Thanks.
You all missed the point. You need to install PAREX EIFS Stucco system that comes with insulation. Call Metro Restoration in Brooklyn at 1-877-34-METRO.
I don’t know, but I bet they wear a lot of sweaters 🙂
So Bob, if your gas usage is the medium level of usage, what in God’s name are the low usage people setting their thermostats at?
FWIW I think roof insulation is probably the most cost-effective thing you can do to save energy.BTW I forgot to mention that it;s important to have vents installed in the roof to vent condensation. The people who blew in the insullation installed two aluminum mushroom vents which seem to be enough to avoid water condensation problems. IIRC my gas bills went down noticably after the insullation job, but since it was done over 25 yearas ago i can’t give any figures.
I have a brownstone at the end of the row like you. My bill for this past month was just under 700. You might want to consider what Bob did and blow in insulation under your roof. New windows will help tremendously (or use plastic in the winter) the exterior wall I had repointed, this may help just a little. You can also have insulation blown in between the plaster and brick (it is only about an inch of space. I squrited foam into it. One room of an extention that was exposed on 3 sides I gutted, re studded and added nice thick insulation. That room was like ice and is now warmer. Also get a thermostat that gives you multiple times to come one. Keep it cool at night and in the day when you are not home.
Good luck
HC,
My situation is quite different.I have a single family brownstone–not one cares if I freeze myself. Also, I have hot air heat, so the norm is for the house to both cool down and heat up fairly rapidly. BTW it rarely drops to 55 degrees at night unless it’s VERY cold out. Usually it drops to the high 50’s when the night setting is on, so the furnace doesn’t actually go on at all.
I forgot to say that we are a semi-attached four-story building too. The walls are exterior walls. Is yours an interior wall that is now exposed? Or is it finished as an exterior wall?
I wish I could have kept the thermostat at 65 degrees, but it’s not legal with tenants. I toyed with the idea of letting the temperature drop to the 50’s at night, but finally decided that running the boiler intermittantly throughout the night couldn’t use that much more energy than heating the radiators up for a solid hour in the morning to make up the temperature difference. Plus, it means less knocking pipes in the morning and less complaining from the night owls in the building.
I’m sure we spend more than average, but $1300 shounds about right to me.
The main reason for my low gas bill is that I’m cheap(or resistant to cold). I keep my thermostat set at 65 degrees day/55 degrees night (settings Jimmy Carter asked the nation to use during the mid-70’s energy crisis, not too long after I bought my house). I also had the roof insulated with blown-in insulation (by Bklyn Union gas c.1975) and have “newish” (installed in the late ’70s) triple glazed windows. Years ago Bklyn Union Gas came and changed my meter thinking it was faulty–the replacement meter didn’t change my gas meter readings.
FWIW the gas bills I get now from Keyspan show my gas usage as a little below the median for “similar’ customers, but far from the bottom, so people with $1000+ gas bills may insist on much higher temperatures than me OR they may be missing ways to save energy.